


Western Winter

by nahco3



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-29
Updated: 2011-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-23 05:38:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahco3/pseuds/nahco3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even venture capitalists have feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Western Winter

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted to my lj.

Winter rain in California is beautifully apocalyptic – trees whip back and forth, gutters flood and creeks rise, traffic stops, buildings threaten to crash into the Pacific. The cold seeps into Silva’s bones when he walks outside; the light looks the same at eight in the morning and five at night, like it’s been flittered through smoky glass. No one knows how to deal with the weather. They’re all baffled, still feeling entitled to stretching blue skies of summer. The dead gold grass on the foothills is gone, replaced by the new green of the next generation. Silva loves it.

At times he’s breathlessly, desperately happy. He wakes up early and drinks his coffee watching the rain paint the street dark. He drives to work – slow going because people aren’t used to driving on roads this wet. He’s at work before the receptionist, before everyone. He flips on the lights and turns on his laptop.

All this for the moment at 8:33 every morning when David Villa comes in, his hair soaked, his shoulders wet because he doesn’t have an umbrella. There are dark circles under his eyes. He puts down his briefcase and takes off his jacket, unaware anyone is watching him. He looks abstractly sad, dark and compact and contained, like everything Silva has ever wanted his whole life.

Silva wants to call his mother on the phone, wants to laugh hysterically, wants to hug wet strangers in the street, wants everyone to know he loves this man and it’s killing him. Too much happiness, bubbling loose and brilliant within him, love he can’t give away and can’t keep.

David turns around and sees Silva watching him, gives an absent-minded nod that could mean a lot of things. Silva waves back, an awkward beat off, but who cares because David cracks something closer to a smile.

Work has been hell lately. Work was actually always hell – Silva pretends not to mind working thirteen-hour days and coming home smelling like David’s cigarette smoke, but even he isn’t that adept at denial. He’s cashing a bafflingly large paycheck every month, proof that David or Emery or someone believes in his genius at least.

“Isn’t this what you want?” his mother asks him, when he calls her. “Mi hijito, just think, you have a new car and I have a first class ticket to see you whenever I want. This is better than slaving away in some lab for the rest of your life getting cancer, no?”

Maybe it is. Silva has developed a taste for good sake and perfect sushi, for the crisp lines of David’s Armani suits and the engineered curves of his BMW. He wakes up from a dream about David’s mouth with his heart pounding and slides seamlessly into dissatisfaction. He drinks coffee, walks out to his car in the grey and wet cold, drives to work and waits for David. It occurs to him he shouldn’t feel like this. He goes to a therapist a few times, but the therapist mostly wants Silva to talk about how being a VC makes him feel guilty, and about “moving past” his feelings for David. Silva just wants some pills to correct his brain chemistry; he stops going once he’s gotten the prescription.

Besides, “moving past” David is impossible. David is everywhere. David puts his hand low on Silva’s back in crowded restaurants to guide him toward the table where they’re meeting nervous engineers. David yells when CEOs don’t take his calls (“who the fuck do they think they are?”) and Silva keeps his eyes down. David refuses to understand the point of American football and drags Silva to a rundown bar on El Camino to watch the Champion’s League.

“Why the fuck don’t they have a parking lot?” David asks, aggravated at risking his car to street parking. Silva shrugs, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead because David’s thrown his arm over the back of Silva’s seat so he can look out the back window better. Silva wants to lean back just a little, but he’s afraid to risk the contact. He isn’t prepared to feel David flinch away from him, so he holds himself tense, bites his lip. He feels like his heart is squeezing in on itself, but that’s kind of amazing too, all the beauty of a collapsing star.

They sit at a tiny booth, knees brushing under the table probably accidentally, although David doesn’t shift. David orders a Diet Coke, since it’s before noon and he’s not drinking yet, but Silva gets a beer. Fuck reactions with his pills, he isn’t going to last long this close to David without something to dull the edges.

David unsurprisingly talks through the entire game, criticism and contempt and grudging admiration. Silva laughs because he can’t help it, and David laughs, too, soft and unguarded just for a second. Silva’s on his third beer because this is too good.

David drives them back to the office confidently – he speeds and is suitably annoyed with California drivers who can’t handle a little rain. Silva waits until David reaches for the radio before reaching for it himself. Their hands brush accidentally/intentionally, and David darts a look at Silva.

“You pick the station,” he tells Silva. Silva can’t remember what stations he likes, can’t remember what music he likes, can’t remember anything but the way David looks at nine at night, exhausted face lit by his computer screen and David leaning back in his desk chair talking on his cell phone and David smiling at him over a champagne flute the night Silva made them fifty million dollars.

They’re going to be back at the office soon, and Silva doesn’t want that, he wants to keep driving forever. He wants to head up 280, trace the line of the hills until they round the corner and find San Francisco, waiting like a revelation. He wants to see how many miles he can look west over grey ocean before the horizon swoops down too low. He wants to kiss David and map the lines of his body, a new and better kind of cartography.

David pulls into the parking garage, smooth and easy.

“Wait,” Silva says. “We should get lunch.”

David unbuckles his seat belt. “We already took our lunch break.”

“I don’t mind working late,” Silva says, mostly truthful.

David’s hand hovers on the door handle. “Where were you thinking?”

“There’s this café in the city…”

David raises his eyebrows and Silva knows, he just knows, David can see the pathetic hope in Silva’s eyes, can read every thought he’s ever had in that look.

“Why the fuck not?” David asks. “They can manage without us for a few hours.”

David backs out of the garage, his arm slung over Silva’s seat so he gets a better view out of the rear window. Silva shifts back to rest against David’s arm experimentally, and David brings his hand around to cup Silva’s shoulder. Silva starts to laugh, so hard he’s afraid he’ll never be able to stop.

David shakes his head, maybe amused. It’s raining like the end of the world, too hard to last, and Silva doesn’t care.


End file.
